FORGOTTEN CORNERS

[Stanley]

Good! So few people really note their surroundings.
If you have a careful look at the 1853 map above and find the mill at Yarlside then follow the head race back you'll find that the weir was upstream from the ford. The remains of the race are still there and indeed still has water in it at the bottom of Hall Lane, funny thing is that it flows in the opposite direction now. There is very little fall in the valley bottom, that's why the race is so long. At some time the drainage system has been altered round the bottom of the lane and the old leat has been incorporated in it and now flows the wrong way.
Another notable feature is that as you come away from the ford on the north side of Stock Beck you are facing into a large hole on the hillside. I reckon this was the quarry where they got the stone for the church and the hall and it is well healed over now.



The 1892 25" map of Bracewell. If you look under the caption 'St Micheal's Church you'll see the name 'Kiln Hill'. In one of the descriptions of the original Bracewell Hall I have seen there is a mention that brick was used in the construction. There was a croft called 'Kiln Field' and this mention as well and I suspect that they made brick on site when the hall was originally built.
If you look in the field at the course of Stock Beck upstream of the ford you'll see where the weir for the mill was. Note the arrow on the leat showing a westerly flow. It is reversed now.

[Stanley]

Here's the 1853 OS 6" map of the area round Esp Lane and Hollins.
One of the things we tend to forget when thinking about the arrival of the canal in 1800 is that Barlick became the closest source of lime and limestone to NE Lancashire which is short of that essential mineral. The other thing we tend to forget is that the Craven Fault, essentially the boundary between grit stone to the south and limestone to the north strikes diagonally through Barlick from NE to SW. We are all aware of the major limestone quarries at Gill, Greenberfield and Springs but there were other sources and two of them are on this map at Hollins and Calf Hall. You'll see both marked on here and both have lime kilns.
The quarry at Calf Hall was obliterated shortly after this map was surveyed because when Bracewell built Butts mill he had to cut into the hill to the north of the site and the quarry at Calf Hall was an obvious place to dump the spoil. This suggests that by 1840 the Calf Hall quarry was no longer being worked, it was relatively small.
The quarry at Hollins is much bigger and the last time I was up there you could still see the remains of the kiln which was a firebrick-lined structure and to my mind this indicates that it was in use after 1850. When you consider that the considerable output from this large quarry all had to go down to the town and the canal via Esp Lane using horses and carts, there must have been a lot of traffic and the trade must have been profitable to support that extra cost.
Ted Waite once told me that when his dad John farmed at Hilly Close he entered into a dispute with BUDC over maintenance of Esp Lane, his case was that they had maintained it in the past. He failed but I wonder whether what he was referring to was the maintenance of the lane when the heavy quarry traffic was using it. It would have made sense because the trade was of benefit to the town.

[Stanley]

Thinking about the above, the lime kiln at Hollins must have been fired using coal brought in on the canal and that would have to be carted up there from Coates Wharf. I assume the same carts took the stone and burned lime down to the canal again as it makes such good sense. That must have involved a lot of wear on the road.
Here's something I found out about road maintenance on another road
"In the Barnoldswick Manorial Court rolls we find this entry: ‘17th April 1733. Every person using the way from Salterforth Town Stoops to Barnoldswick Coates with cart or carriage or any other loads (not having the right to be there) in the mercy of the Lords [fined] 4/-’. This must be Cross Lane boundary at Salterforth to Coates (or Musgill, a name which appears on an old waymark). This was not a public road as part of it at Rainhall was later designated a private road. From this later judgement we also know that it was not considered of sufficient standard for wheeled vehicles. This is the first direct evidence I know for the existence of wheeled vehicle traffic in Barnoldswick and is proof of the pressure that was growing for adequate roads for such vehicles. The owners of this way were trying to reduce the wear on it by excluding wheeled traffic and hence the expense to them of repairing it. The reason the court made the ruling is to avoid the repair being made a charge on the manor."
When you read that note that the word 'fine' in connection with these courts was not the same as our modern sense. It is more accurately thought of as 'charge'. In effect a large toll was being placed on any vehicle wanting to use the road, 4/- was a punitive amount and meant effectively that such traffic was banned.



Nick Livesey did a good job when he found this marker stone and replaced it in its original position on Cross Lane.

[Stanley]

There are lots of references to road maintenance in the Court Records. They were acting very much like the council we have today. The general principle was that maintenance of the road surface and drainage ditches was the responsibility of the properties the road passed through which made sense because they were of course the principal users. I found one reference to the Corn Mill and the roads leading to that were regarded as being very important. A close eye was kept on its condition and instructions issued backed by fines in the event of non-compliance.
It seems that a distinction was made between the local routes like the ones to the Corn Mill and what was referred to as 'The King's Highway' which I assume was the through route through the town. Maintenance of this was also the responsibility of the land owners but major works like bridges and culverts seem to have been paid for by a rate levied on the whole town. From the frequency of mentions of roads in the court rolls it is obvious that it was regarded as important.
Another frequent mention is of rubbish on the road and blocking ditches. I doubt if there was any general waste collection and people tended to just throw it out into the ditches and on the road. This was strictly policed.
We are often told stories about how difficult road transport was and how bad the roads were but the evidence is that there was far more traffic than you would think. I have found records in the Bolton Priory accounts for the 15th century referring to very large timbers being transported out of Barlick to Colne, Gisburn and back to the Priory. There would have to be serious roads to allow this to happen.



Here's a contemporary wagon, a serious vehicle carrying both goods and passengers. Note the broad wheels which were mandatory as they didn't cut the surface up and tended to roll it flat and compact the surface.
Then of course there was the packhorse traffic, much of it salt. Remember that Salterforth was derived from the name 'Salter's Ford'.

[Stanley]

The bridge that replaced the salter's ford. The date is about 1900 before the Kelbrook New Road was built, that came over 20 years later.



This is the front gate to one of the cottages on Cragg Row at Salterforth. I got a call one day from the lady who lived there who wanted her gate refurbishing. It was in terrible condition, some elements were completely missing but she evidently thought a lot of it and didn't shy away when I told her that it was really a matter of re-making it. It was made by a smith in Earby and was worth rescuing so I took it away, sand blasted it and primed it straight away and then I cut out all the rotten bits and replaced them. It took me over a week. However she was delighted when I brought it back and re-hung it. It's a nice gate and was well worth the trouble. All it needs now is regular painting.



This is Salterforth School in about 1890.

[Cathy]

Love the gate Stanley, I'd be proud to have that gate.

[Stanley]

I agree with you Cathy. I had a look at it a few years back and it needed a coat of paint. I knocked on the door to let the new occupant know the history of it but there was nobody in. Perhaps I should try again!



Salterforth School in 2004 as a private house. Things change!



This the end of the road below the school where it meets the main road. You might wonder what is special about it but if you look carefully you'll see that the end houses on the row have retained their original cast iron railings. Most of these were requisitioned by the government during WW2 and were cut off and used for the war effort. For some reason these escaped. The usual reason for survival was on safety grounds, for instance if they were guarding a drop on the other side (Or if they were round a Royal Palace!) but this doesn't apply here.





Further up the road over the canal bridge Bashfield Farm is on the right and behind it further to the west is this small building. This is marked on the map as a hydraulic ram and is known as Hall Spout Ram after the spring that feeds it. It houses a large hydraulic ram which is a type of pump actuated by water pressure in the supply pipe and pumping a proportion of the water to a higher level. Harold Duxbury told me it was installed by Gledstone Estate as part of a private water supply system feeding their local farms.

[plaques]

Salterforth National School Plaque.

.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that P.....



You may have noticed on the map yesterday that there was a tramway to the canal and a boatyard nearby. Here's the 1892 map showing the quarries. They both had a tramway down to the canal for stone exports, mainly road setts to Nelson and Burnley. They ran by gravity downhill and had horses to pull the empty jubilee wagons (Self-tippers) back up to the quarries. If you look at Jack Platt's LTP evidence he tells us all about the quarries, he worked fro Sagar who owned two of them. The third quarry on the Lancashire side of Salterforth Lane was Park Close which also had a brickworks just below it using the shale from the quarry to make very poor quality bricks.



The brick works are the buildings next to the tramway below the quarry.



This was Park Close in 1948 after it had been closed. It was run later by a man called Gibson as a scrapyard. He was killed in a plane crash and there was much talk afterwards about the whereabouts of his money. One man used to accost me frequently in the 1960s to tell me that he knew where it was buried!



One of the Park Close boats loading with 40 tons of setts for Burnley in about 1890.

[Stanley]

Jack Platt told me that the offal from the quarries was tipped on the north side of the lane below the quarries and became a significant mound. He said that when the Keighley Road out of Skipton was improved in the 1930s thousands of tons of the waste was carted from these spoil heaps to use as the foundation for the road out through Sandbeds and he thought the rest was used when Kelbrook New Road was put in at about the same time.
There was more than one boatyard at Salterforth and I have always wondered if the wood used was local. If so it's the last example of Barlick timber, that was so famous for so many years, being used.



The canal cottages near the Anchor in about b1890. The tow path and the canal banking looks so well cared for.



The cottages in 2002.

[Stanley]

High Lane, between Barlick and Blacko is a very ancient route out to Colne and East Lancashire. The only alternative in medieval times and up to the 1930s was to either take the high road direct or use Cross Lane or Musgill Gate as it was called then from Coates to Salterforth and Earby.



Here's the 1853 6" OS of the road. As usual we run out of detail at the boundary at Standing Stone Gate but note that it's a crossroads.



Here's the adjoining sheet. Notice that from Standing Stone Gate a road runs straight forward, crosses the railway line and gives a direct route to Foulridge and Colne from Barlick. This road has fallen out of use now. Even then there was a better alternative further down the road, Slipper Hill Lane which though slightly longer was an easier gradient. I suspect that when this map was surveyed the direct route from Standing Stone gate was already falling into disuse.
My point is that until the 1930s High Lane was a very important link between Barlick and East Lancashire and in that respect these routes are now forgotten corners. Kelbrook New Road changed everything!

[Stanley]

By the end of the Great War it was obvious that with the advent of motor transport, largely provided by the sale of ex-WD vehicles our road system was sadly deficient. Basically we were still using the medieval routes. It was decided to build two new roads, one out to Thornton by-passing Greenberfield Locks and the other out towards Kelbrook to improve the Lancashire traffic. The Greenberfield by-pass wasn't built until the 1960s but the first sod was cut for Kelbrook New Road on the 2nd of December 1922. From the start it was intended to be a boost to employment in the hard times and there was one Cockney at West Marton, Matt Dillon, who travelled North to get a job and never went back, he lived in Salterforth for the rest of his life. The work was fraught with problems, contractors failed constantly and in the end the County Council had to finish the job. It was officially opened on the 25th of October 1934. During the delay it became a local joke and the only interesting fact I have found during the twelve years is that in the late 1930s Barlick had its first visit from a plane giving joy rides. It had no difficulty landing but take-off was a different matter. Eventually the council allowed the pilot to use the almost completed New Road as a runway. Shirley Windle once told me that she had a ride in it while it was here.



Here's the 1954 6" OS showing the New Road. One thing to note is Park Bridge, a poured concrete skew Bridge across the canal. If you're ever down there have a close look at it. It is showing its age and the exposed reinforcing bars and spalled concrete on the underside suggest it might not fare well if thoroughly inspected. Think of the disruption Barlick would suffer if it was ever closed for refurbishment. That bridge in itself might be a forgotten corner and perhaps it is time it was remembered!

[Stanley]

Looking more closely at the 1954 OS map, the field to the east of Park Bridge on the north side of the canal was cut in two when they built the New Road. Harold Duxbury once told me that in that field there was a well covered with a stone slab which was the source of the Bowker Drain that ran alongside the canal all the way to Long Ing and then headed off into Barlick towards Old Coates Mill and eventually into the Stock Beck in what is now Victory Park.



Along the course of the drain mills like Moss Shed used the drain as a free source of water and reports said that it had a good flow and saved a lot of money in licensing fees for water abstracted from the canal. Walt Fisher's father, who was engineer at Moss in the 1930s told Walt that the Bowker Drain wasn't what it was, it had very little water in it. Harold said that this was true and the deterioration happened when the New Road was built. He said that the well at Park Bridge was in a gravel bed and he suspected that the initial supply came from the higher ground to the west and when the New Road was constructed this flow was cut off and that was what made the difference. Harold was pretty good with his knowledge of water resources and I will take his opinion as correct. Over the years I tried to find the well in that field but always failed. Remember that it was Harold who re-piped much of the Bowker Drain when it was being used by Rolls at Bankfield as a source of non-potable water for the factory so he can be trusted.
One other small point of interest is that the quarry on Hurst Hill was once reported to be a possible source of silver but that never came to anything. See the Craven Herald of 22nd of September 1888 for reports that exploratory mining was actually in progress.

[Stanley]

The other day I saw a contemporary painting of a view of a valley and commented that it reminded me of the 1580 map as in those days the only way to make a map was to go to a high place and draw it. The 1580 map of Whitemoor is such a map and this explains why in many cases the proportions are wrong.



My interpretation of the 1580 map of Whitemoor after consulting with that wonderful woman Doreen Crowther, who is a forgotten corner in her own right. I was trying to make sense of my photograph of the original....



which as you can see, is a remarkable survivor but not the easiest in the world to interpret so I did my version of it and attempted to fill in the details. In the end I rang Doreen and we spent a couple of hours bent over the table combining our knowledge. I think we both learned a lot.
I came across the map by chance and sent off for this photo of it. It's 24" X 32" and here's an image of the letter that came with it.



Note the price! In later years I enquired about the map and they told me they hadn't a negative for it but they must have had one at some time. Look on the site for the dispute between Foulridge and Barlick over the land, there's lots on there!

[Stanley]

A long forgotten corner in Barlick is the cock-up that resulted from William de Lady's perambulation of the bounds of the manor in preparation for gifting the Manor of Barnoldswick to the Cistercian monks from Fountains Abbey (literally the word means walking ).
In those days there were no maps and in order to delineate the boundaries was to physically walk round the boundary accompanied by men at arms, the clerks and no doubt the servants carrying the refreshments! Every time they reached a summit the clerks would do a sketch drawing and combine them later into a map which though not accurate, gave the boundaries and could be used in preparing the legal documents.
This was fine as long as you had a good idea of the bounds when you set off. William must have been badly advised because he inadvertently included Admergill, part of the Royal Forest of Blackburnshire, in the manor and this ensured litigation which dragged on for over 100 years. This explains why, on some old maps, Admergill is described as 'Detached' .
There's lots on the site about this and during my research I found the answer to a question that has puzzled me for years. Have you ever come across summits named on maps as *****'s Seat? Simon's Seat near Skipton is an example. One of the summits the Perambulation names is 'Allainset' near Blacko and this is from the same root. These were places where the lord paused (no doubt for a bacon butty) while his clerks did their drawings.....

[Bodger]

by Stanley » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:52 am
Re the picture of a waggon and horses, is it an optical illusion or are the wheel rims beveled and if so why ?,

[Stanley]

Bodge, no it's not an optical illusion. All traditional wheelwrights dish their wooden wheels and the heavier the wheel the deeper the dishing. With very heavy wheels like the ones in the picture the bevel is far greater. The principle is that the axle is fitted so that the tyre is flat on the road and the spokes above it are perpendicular to the hub. The tyres are broad because there was a regulation that they had to be broad enough to flatten narrower ruts out.

[Stanley]

I've been alerted to The Pilgrimage of Grace (1537) and its history which I was surprised to find has very close links with the Craven District. It has cropped up in Diarmid's biography of Thomas Cromwell and there are local names involved like the Tempests. Definitely a forgotten corner and I have just ordered a book on it published in 1969 on the last days of the Lancashire Monasteries which was offered for a surprisingly low price for a Chetham Society book, they are usually £50+. Watch this space!

[Wendyf]

I've just been reading something about the Pilgrimage of Grace in Ian Lockwood's "The History of Skipton".

[Stanley]

i'VE NEVER TAKEN MUCH NOTICE OF IT wENDY BUT NOW FIND THAT i SHOULD SO i'M GOING DIGGING!
(Bugger caps lock! )
I was digging into another matter this morning and tripped over a Forgotten Corner in the long grass, or more accurately some unrelated index cards. If you have been following the story I have always believed that part of the water provision at Butts Mill was a balance pond or dam in the Parrock which was at a higher level than Gillians Beck and was fed from the dam at Clough Mill via a Lea Water Meter. The big problem has always been that I can find hard evidence for the meter in the CHSC Minute Books but have never found any hard evidence for the existence of the dam. I have great pleasure in telling you that at long last I have it!
On another matter completely I found this reference from an old BUDC letter book. (Ref. UDBk 8/1, Letter book, 07 1897) It's a letter dated 10 September 1897 from the council surveyor Tom Biker to Butts Mill asking them to attend to pipes beneath their dam on land belonging to the Baptist Chapel Trustees. (This can only be the Parrock) The Council were worried about a junction from iron to stone pipes (or a drain) beneath the dam.
Not an earth-shaking matter in today's terms but it is to me. This is positive evidence that the dam existed and vindicates my common sense deduction which I couldn't prove for over 40 years. Yippee!!!

[Wendyf]

Excellent!

[Stanley]

I knew you'd understand my elation Wendy!

[Stanley]

The Parrock Dam..... Funny thing is that it isn't shown on the 1892 map.



This map made during the 1887 sale shows the stub that first alerted me to the fact it existed and fed the Calf Hall Beck at a high enough level to be useful at Butts but unfortunately the dam wasn't shown.

[Stanley]

Thinking about that dam. I become more convinced that the route for the feeder pipe from the NW corner of Clough dam will be a CI pipe direct from there across the road under the corner of the Old Chapel. That's the most likely way to do it. The dam, or more correctly, balance pond, wouldn't need to be very big, it was only a transition point for the flow from Clough at a high enough level to feed into the beck where it ran down the side of the mill before diving underneath into another underground dam on the mill premises from where it could be pumped up into the boiler house before exiting into the roadway outside the mill where it joined Gillians Beck in what used to be an open pit but has since been buried under the road.

[Stanley]

This was my best guess until this week. Now I am sure that the guess was in fact almost correct, placing it a bit further to the west would be more accurate. What remains now is how the water was conveyed from 'A' to 'B'. There are two possibilities, a direct CI pipe from A to B or a longer CI pipe laid along the course of the tail race under Walmsgate into Parrock and across to the pond. Of the two I favour the direct connection, it will be a 6" CI pipe laid under the road and threaded between the buildings, or down Calf Hall lane and then across to the pond. Of these two, I prefer the latter.
You never know, I may solve that one in the end. Until then it's a forgotten corner!
By the way, this map shows the open confluence of Gillians and Calf Hall Becks in the road outside the mill. It's all culverted now but still there.